ruined
by Nautica Dawn
Summary: She thinks she might understand why he is a former clergyman instead of a current one. There's no way a wild thing like him could stay tame enough for that. /secret santa fic for tricky


Dedication: Merry Christmas, Tricky!

Disclaimer: Me no own.

Note: Thank you, saraa, les, and sonya for looking this over for me.

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_ruined_

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She can't remember why she's here. She never spends time in bars. This is the pastime of _that_ woman and it's not like her. She almost gets up to leave, but then she spots a flash of irritating gold hair and she remembers. She's the pathetic woman who followed the bitch who stole her boyfriend to a nightclub where the aforementioned bitch is now with the stolen boyfriend.

She thinks she might need a drink, but she doesn't drink so she doesn't really know if this is what it feels like. All she does know is that the smoky atmosphere inside the club is making her sick because this isn't her environment and she should be at home with the stolen boyfriend making jokes and just watching the stars because the clouds are never out at night andandand—

She groans, her head hitting the bar as she crosses her arms as a cradle to catch her heavy head.

"Wow, I've seen a lot of drunks that look like that, but you're the first to reach that stage without a drop of alcohol."

She lifts her head just enough to glare at the bartender. He only flicks his violet eyes at her as he mixes something together to go in the impossibly tall glass in front of him.

She scowls, "Why are you talking to me?"

She doesn't have anything smarter to say because she really doesn't care. All she cares about is the misery slowly pecking away at her heart every second the stolen boyfriend is with that bitch.

The bartender scoffs before motioning around with a bottle of vodka, "You're the only other sober one here, sweetling. No one else can talk, the lucky shits."

She mumbles in agreement. The other people in the club are lucky because they aren't up for thinking about much beyond the music pounding through the room. They don't have to worry about looking up and seeing the irritating smile of a boyfriend-stealing bitch as she clings to the stolen boyfriend. They don't really care, their emotions shuttered by the alcohol in their veins.

Drinking has never appealed to her before, but suddenly she wants that wicked nepenthe. She doesn't order anything, though, because she knows she's alone and she's always been the logical one who won't do anything without thinking it through and making sure there are no possible failures and maybe that's why that bitch was able to steal her boyfriend. Her brothers and friends always tell her, jokingly, that she's boring. They don't mean anything by it; she knows they value her cautiousness but what if that's exactly why her boyfriend left her for that vapid whore as easily as he did?

"Hey, sweetling, you okay? You look like a fucking bulldozer just ran over your puppy."

She manages a glare, but there's no heat in her eyes.

The bartender just laughs, finishing the drink and handing it off before he sweeps his hand through the slicked-back hair she is only just now realizing is, of all colors, silver.

He doesn't look that old, so she guesses he's like that Hatake pervert Sakura calls a teacher and just went grey tragically young. She can't help but notice the structure of his face isn't quite normal and there's something odd about his voice. It's almost as if this language is not his own and something finally clicks.

"You're not Japanese, are you?" she asks, genuine curiosity overriding her despair.

The bartender smirks, the amusement in his violet eyes evident even in the flashing colors of the dark club, "Half, actually, but I was raised elsewhere. My bastard father was the Japanese parent, if that's what you want to know. And no offense, sweetling, but you don't look very Japanese either."

She chuckles darkly, knowing all too well what it's like to have one of those. Her own father is a bastard and, as he pointed out, very not Japanese. Her mother, sweet woman that she had been, was the Japanese parent in her family.

"But you weren't raised here," she points out.

He looks at her carefully, wiping off a glass before starting another drink, "You're good. No, I wasn't, unfortunately. I was raised in the hell-hole that was my mother's house in the States."

"I think I would have liked to have lived elsewhere," she muses quietly, knowing that if she didn't live in Japan, then her brother would have never joined the TMPD and she would have never met the boyfriend who was officially stolen.

"No, I don't think you understand. Try being raised by a single mother who, after your birth, decided to go batshit crazy and become a devout Catholic of all things and then decides that you should grow up to be a fucking priest and ships you off to the pit of hell formally known as seminary school."

She looks up at him in surprise, "You were almost a priest?"

"Sweetling, I _was_ a priest," he grins and there's something sinful about it but that might just be the fact that the air is hazy and there's brightly colored lights flashing everywhere and they keep catching the various liquids he's mixing together.

And he's kind of pretty.

She sees it now that his hair is slipping from it's slicked back state, some of the silver strands falling across his eyes and she thinks that he might be really kind of gorgeous with his hair completely loose and standing in proper light.

"How did you end up here?" she asks over the music, sitting up a little more. She's starting to forget why she came there because she is resolutely focusing on this pretty bartender and not on the bitch and the stolen boyfriend.

There's that smirk again, "I know the owner. He's a bastard and a half but he'll always help out whatever poor fucker ends up on his doorstep."

She remembers then that this is Akatsuki and she does know who owns it. Sakura speaks of him every now and then, a light in her green eyes telling her friends that there's something going on with this mysterious Uchiha Itachi, but she has never asked for details. She thinks she might need to if she wants to find out more about this pretty bartender because she's fairly certain that she does want to know more about him.

"Why are you talking to me?" she asks again, because she's wondering why he would bother with a woman clearly in Miserableland.

He shrugs, setting down a bottle of absinthe so he can take out a lighter. His eyes aren't on her as he speaks, "I already said it. You're the only other sober one here. It's fucking boring being a bartender because there's no chance for a decent conversation."

He takes a careful look at her, violet eyes starting at the lowest point of her body and slowly dragging up as that very sinful smile slowly crawls back to his features, "That and that gorgeous little dress you're wearing looks amazing on you, sweetling."

She blushes, "Thank you."

"Of course," he states, "It'd look a hell of a lot better on my floor."

She stiffens, her blush fading and the smile on her lips freezing, "What?"

There's something returning to her, something the voice at the back of her mind reminds her has been long neglected. It's a wonderful feeling, this anger and righteous indignation and this burning _desire_. It's—

It's a spark.

She can't remember ever having this with the stolen boyfriend but it doesn't change the fact that she's Recently Dumped and she's here pathetically spying on the stolen boyfriend and the blonde bitch that stole him.

Still, it's a spark and this bartender is, in Tenten's words, _absolutely delicious_.

She glances over the crowd to find that she can't see the stolen boyfriend and the blonde bitch anymore. She looks back at the bartender to find him staring at her as he mixes whatever poison has been ordered.

"I said, _sweetling_, that as fucking beautiful as you are in that little black dress, you'd look absolutely sexy with it tossed off in the corner of my bedroom."

"Sorry, _sweetheart_," she smirks back at him, "I don't do that with ex-priests I've just met. I don't even know your name."

She thinks she might understand why he is a former clergyman instead of a current one. There's no way a wild thing like him could stay tame enough for that.

And he wants her, she realizes. He genuinely does. He's pissing her off and pulling her out of Miserableland all with one bad pick-up line. It's amazing. The stolen boyfriend and she just fell together in a simple and rather unspectacular way. This man, though, this man wants her and she knows that if she were to do something incredibly stupid that she could have him and it could make her see the stars again as something more than just stand-ins for clouds.

He could teach her what passion is again, because she's long forgotten what it's like to play with fire.

He says something, but she isn't paying attention. When she realizes this, she has to ask him again, adjusting herself so he can better see down the plunging neckline of the little black dress she's wearing.

He's smiling again, violet eyes dragging across her exposed skin until he finds her gaze again, "Hidan. My name is Hidan."

"Temari," she gives.

She's doing something sinful, the rational side of her thinks. She shouldn't be doing this because this is stupid and rash and foolish and idiotic and reckless andandand…

She doesn't care.

There's a gorgeous bartender—Hidan, she reminds herself—who wants her little black dress on the floor of his bedroom and he's reminding her of what it's like to feel passion again and she thinks she might just go with him to find out what it's like to be _alive_.

She needs to do something stupid. She's been safe and sane and always careful for so long that she needs to do something she would never do just to prove to herself that she is really alive and a part of the world. She has one baby brother working in a school and another in the TMPD and she's just Temari. She has a nice job at a museum, but there's nothing exciting in her life.

Someone jostles into her and she turns to snap at the person who has interrupted her dangerous conversation to find herself with a face full of irritating blonde hair.

There's a pair of baby blues that swing her way, a loose smile on painted lips, "Screw me if I'm wrong, but haven't we met before?"

It's the bitch.

She almost says something polite and dismissive, but she catches Hidan staring at her and she feels the urge to do something bad.

"You're not wrong, but I'll let you go on screwing my ex since he clearly prefers vapid blond whores like you," she smiles.

There's a bit of confusion in the bitch's eyes before she lights up with a goofy grin as she slurs, "You're funny."

"And you're a bitch," she mumbles, watching the priest-turned-bartender choke on a laugh as he mixes something for a brooding purple-haired woman who looks vaguely familiar.

"Oh no, I'm Ino," the bitch laughs, "I'm here with my Shika-chan. He jus' left this absolute bitch he's been with for too long. Are you here wi' anyone?"

Temari is about to respond with something particularly nasty about the fact that this bitch is calling the stolen boyfriend a couple of things he probably can't stand and that shouldn't be said to the Recently Dumped girlfriend when a voice cuts through the noise, her knight in sinful armor coming to her rescue, "Sweetling there is waiting on me."

"Really?" the bitch asks after she gives him her order.

He's smirking and she can already feel in her bones that he's about to say something that will make it impossible for her to refuse him, "Mmhmm. She's going to come home with me tonight and that little black dress is going in the corner of my room faster than you can say 'fuck me'. Isn't that right, _Temari_?"

He says it. Her name is all that it takes, those three syllables falling from his lips and she knows she can't refuse him because there's a promise in the way he says her name. It's a dark, dark promise and it's one that she irrationally wants to be kept.

She needs this, she thinks, because she has always been safe and cautious and that's what lost her the man she's called her boyfriend for the past three years. She needs to learn how to be wild again, like she used to be before she met the stolen boyfriend. She used to be so powerful, she knows.

Tenten used to call her a force of nature.

She wants to be one again.

She thinks Hidan is more than willing to teach her how to do it.

The bitch is staring at them both with wide eyes before she finally settles on Temari, "Did you really fall for a guy who uses lame pick-up lines like that?"

Temari gives her a lazy smirk, leaning in close as she whispers, "Bitch, you stole my boyfriend and he's offering to fuck me four ways to Sunday. I don't think I'll be able to remember _Shika-chan_ and his simplicity after what he's offering. And frankly, I happen to like that he's so blunt."

The bitch leans away from her, nose wrinkling to the point that she looks like her namesake, "You're weird."

She shrugs, "Maybe."

She looks up to find Hidan staring at her from the corner of his eye, a lazy smirk on his lips and cat-like grace in his movements as he finishes the bitch's order. She can't help but think she's making the right choice. It's stupid but she's young so it's forgivable.

The bitch wanders away, leaving Temari to suddenly feel nervous as her audacious streak dies down again under the weight of Hidan's gaze. She's wary as she looks up to meet his eyes, a question in her own.

"Tell me, sweetling, did you mean what you said?"

"About?" she choked out.

He grins like a Cheshire cat stealing milk, "About letting me take you home."

She traces an indistinct pattern on the table. She wants to weigh the cons and pros, but she realizes that there's really no point. She's still going to throw caution to the wind and be a young and pretty twenty-three-year-old woman with no one waiting up for her. She's still going to do something really bad tonight because that's the way it goes. The worst of men uses a lame pick-up line and finds a miserable good girl to turn bad for at least one night and there's something explosively wonderful about it.

These are the stories that make up the horror stories her friends share when they stay in for the night with ice cream and action movies. They talk about the one-night-stands she only vaguely remembers from her high school days before she had to become a mother to her younger brothers. She knows that she is doing something she will likely regret at some point in her life, but she wants to live in the moment for once.

These are the things that fall between the cracks. These are the little bits between the spaces. The reasons for why the bad romances happen, the actual people involved are always forgotten. It's always just the aftermath that goes down in the storybooks.

She looks up at him with a smile-smirk in place and a light in her eyes, "Only if you think you can handle me."

"Kitty's got fucking claws," he laughs, not taking his eyes off of her as he reaches for another bottle of something vile to pour for whatever poor soul has ordered it, "I like. But I think the real question is whether or not a sweetling like you can keep up with me."

He is so bad and she thinks she might be so smitten.

"Let's find out. When do you get to leave?"

She's being brazen, but she can see the approval in his face and she thinks that might be something he doesn't give out all that often. A small bubble of pride swells in her heart, but the growing heat in a far lower place eclipses it to the point that she doesn't really register the feeling.

Hidan moves closer to her, setting his hands on the bar and leaning into her. She can feel the warmth of his breath and can smell the distinct lack of alcohol in his system. Like her, he is completely sober and makes this all the more real to her. There's a sultry look to him as he leans in to the point that he's nearly touching her. With less than a whisper between them, he says just a few words that convince her that she has absolutely made the right choice.

"Not soon enough, sweetling."

She is so going to be ruined before this night is over, but if he's what she gets out of it, then she really doesn't care.

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Note: I have never written anything like this before. I think that fact is painfully obvious. I hope you like it, Tricky.

Feedback is appreciated.

~hikari adams


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